Celebrity Chic: How Fashion Star Anna Sui Entertains

A tiny kitchen is the designer's sweet spot

Unless we're dining at a neighborhood restaurant like Il Cantinori, I like having friends to dinner in my apartment. But for a change of atmosphere, we all head up to my top-floor studio for dessert. That's about all the kitchen there can handle: Built into a small alcove, it only has a little stove, an undercounter refrigerator, and custom-made cabinets inspired by a pie safe. My favorite thing is to buy a mille crêpe cake from Lady M. My friend Andrew Bolton, a curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, introduced me to it. One bite and you're in heaven; it's that decadent. All you need to round it out is vanilla ice cream and pots of coffee and tea. The plates I use for the cake and ice cream are vintage black-and-white Paratiisi china by the Finnish company Arabia. The pattern has been reissued in that colorway again after more than 30 years, so I can stock up instead of waiting for a piece to show up on eBay or in a flea market. And I always decorate the studio with white flowers in black crystal vases, usually white tulips or white hydrangeas.
—As told to Mitchell Owens